The play An Enemy of the People focuses on the truth and how different characters reveal their feelings about it. Each character is motivated by different things so act in a certain way. Therefore they end up in conflicts due to their opposing views about the truth of the Baths. For example, the Mayor acts the way he does because he’s motivated by money. Doctor Stockmann tries to expose the truth because of his concern of the public’s health and because he believes he’s doing the right thing. Katherine supports Doctor Stockmann because she’s motivated by family and loyalty towards her husband. As you can see, everyone’s motivated by different things that are important to them.
The Mayor in the play had to ignore the truth because of money. Money played a big role in which motivated the Mayor to ignore the situation of the Baths and also ending up in a conflict with Doctor Stockmann. Since the town gained it major income from the Baths, the Mayor didn’t want to expose the public of the truth. When he says, “Oh, the public has no need for new ideas. The public gets on best with the good old recognized ideas it already has” (Ibsen, 94), he’s being very greedy and saying that it’s better to hide the truth because the people will get mad and try to fix the problem. However, fixing the problem costs a lot of money and the Mayor’s extremely concerned with money and reputation. He didn’t want to put time and money in fixing the pipe in the Baths so he just chose to hide the truth and threaten the public with the increase of tax. Therefore, since the Mayor’s position is a leading, responsible one, he buries the truth in order to protect the success of the Baths.
Katherine, Mrs. Stockmann, is a mother and a wife who’s portrayed as a loving and loyal housewife. At the beginning of the play she was against the idea of Dr. Stockmann who wanted to write an article criticizing the Baths, “Ah, yes, right, right! But what good is the right, if you don’t have the might?” (96). However, when everyone began siding against Dr. Stockmann, Katherine decides to remain loyal to her husband and support his ideas. The reason she supports him is because she’s loyal and she wants to protect her family.
In Enemy of the People, we see that science and technology are at the mercy of those who hold power, in this case, political power. Dr. Stockmann has discovered, through the use of science, that there is a problem with the economic center of the town-the baths. It is not Dr. Stockmann's use of science that questions the compatibility of science and human values, but his bother, Peter Stockmann's use of technology. Peter is able to control the newspaper, and therefore popular opinion, away from Dr. Stockmann (Act 3). The newspaper is a form of technology that allows news of many events to reach the common person. However, this holds a lot of responsibility with it. Whoever is in charge of what goes in the paper has the ability to shape public opi...
Another instance in which it may seem to some people reading the play that Kate is being controlled by...
The Success of the Nazi Party I disagree with this statement, as I believe that there were many other factors that helped the Nazi party. In the background the hatred of the treaty of Versailles, desire to return to a Kaiser figure and the weakness of the Weimar government definitely helped the Nazis gain support from the German people. After the Wall Street crash when Hitler started using article 48 more was when He really started to gain power. The hatred of the treaty of Versailles was very important.
The same idea applies in the play as well. Power and authority are always changing hands. Let’s look at this from the perspective of the main character, Walter. In the beginning of the play, we see Walter being bossed around by his wife and mother. They are always telling him what to do and how to do it. Walter puts up with it, only because he has a plan. When the $1...
The later 18th century was a time of crisis for the old regimes of Europe and their economic systems and political agitation sometimes breaking out into revolts. English Industrial Revolution vaulted Britain to the fore. France was the most powerful and the most typical of the old aristocratic absolute monarchies of Europe. (lower taxes off backs of lower classes).
The first of many situations was when she states that “ I see a woman may be made a fool if she had the spirit to resist” (line 225-226 The taming of the shrew), which means that as a woman she had such strong apparent beliefs of feminism to be opposed to that idea but at the end she let herself be made a fool and her spirit of resisting wasn’t apparent anymore and because of this she has gone on to “Unto the taming school” (4.2.54) to let herself become a proper wife and no longer display the traits of feminism and only be the idea that women must do what their husband says without any say about it because as Laura Hollins Hughes states that “ A play that climaxes with an apparent happy ending in which a woman is offering to make herself a doormat to her husband” is the same as Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew becoming the opposite of twho she is and becoming a doormat that “Any well educated woman in the 20th or 21st century should approach with great caution because you might be in great danger of reaffirming a patriarchal society”(Hughes) which in the era where is written women were portrayed as
The French Revolution evokes many different emotions and controversial issues in that some believe it was worth the cost and some don't. There is no doubt that the French Revolution did have major significance in history. Not only did the French gain their independence, but an industrial revolution also took place. One of the main issues of the Revolution was it's human costs. Two writers, the first, Peter Kropotkin who was a Russian prince, and the other Simon Schama, a history professor, both had very opposing views on whether the wars fought by France during the Revolution were worth it's human costs. Krapotkin believed that the French Revolution was the main turning point for not only France but for most other countries as well. On the other hand, Schama viewed the French Revolution as unproductive and excessively violent.
The French Revolution began after some of the great philosophers such as John Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau were establishing contracts and trying to create a way for people to have a government without a king or at least without a king being in control. The king during that time was King Louie XVI and his queen was a young woman by the name Marie Antoinette. The royal couple was not well liked due to the careless spending and lack of concern for the citizens beneath them. France was on the verge of becoming bankrupt and the crops did very poorly leaving people suffering, starving and fighting for food.
The consequentiality of the vicissitude in Katherine's deportment at the cessation of the play proves to be very paramount. It shows that people can transmute. It also shows that certain people can bring out the best in some folk. In this case Petruchio brought out the best in Katherine after taming her and making her a complying wife.
In this marriage Katherine has no power. She is verbally abused by Petruchio and denied what she needs. As said in the article,“ Kate is transformed after enduring the irrational world of Petruchio 's country house, where she is denied food, sleep, and fashionable accoutrements of her social class” (Karen 263). Katherine is tamed and she praises and respects him now that she is tamed. At the end of the play, when Katherine and Petruchio are at the wedding, Katherine is the only woman out of all at the wedding that actually listens to her husband when they all call their wives. Katherine ends up giving them a speech and telling them to respect their husband: “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head thy sovereign, one that cares for thee And for thy maintenance commits his body” (Shakespear V. ii . 162-164). She respects who he is and all the work that he does for her. Petruchio has the power in marriage because she respects him and his
The ending words of Katherine is submitting to her husband, the role of the woman is to only serve the man and his desires in return for his protection.
This piece of the monologue contribute to the fact that men are in charge of a woman’s life, and the man works hard everyday to provide for the wife, while she is at home safe. Katherine is basically saying a wife owns her husband everything and the husbands repay their wives by protecting them. Katherine then goes on to compare a husband and his wife to a king and his people:
This play has many themes of patriarchy concerning the roles of males and females in a marriage, the authority of fathers over their families, husbands over wives, and men over women (Bloom 13). In the title alone, there's the indication of the husband over the wife, the "taming" of the shrew (16), and the word shrew that is chosen to describe Katherine is somewhat demeaning. In modern day society there is no such boundaries put on women. There should not be one party who overpowers the other one. It is a marriage, a bond that is shared, and each should be respected in the same way. Today, women and men are equals in a marriage, or at least in the United States. Women are no longer as oppressed as they once were. This play is rather primitive on the views of women in society.
Primarily, Mansfield uses the foil characters Laura and Mrs. Sheridan to accentuate Laura’s beliefs in social equality while bringing out Mrs. Sheridan’s opposite actions. After the news of the death of their neighbor, Mr. Scott, Laura feels she “...can’t possible have a garden-party with a man dead just outside [her] front gate”(5) she feels sympathetic towards the family as she knows they will be able to hear their band as they are mourning. On the contrary, Mrs. Sheridan does quite the opposite when alerted of the news, and even more so when Laura tells Mrs. Sheridan of her plans to cancel the party. Mrs. Sheridan strongly believes that “People like that don't expect sacrifices from us.”(6) Mansfield shows the reader how these two characters are quite different from each other. Laura doesn’t want a garden party to be disrespectful of the Scotts, but Mrs. Sheridan believes quite the opposite as she is rude and doesn’t believe the Scotts are on the same level as the Sheridans, being quite lower...
Viewed through the lens of a one kind of feminist critic, we could ask: wasn’t Kate’s “taming” the result of a brutal conditioning by a manipulative Petruchio who was a kind of shrewd “behavioral psychologist?” For at the close of the play, in this passage especially, Kate appears to have metamorphosed from an intractable, ill-tempered woman into a subdued, submissive “Stepford Wife” for Petruchio. And wasn’t her final speech a humilia...